


Catharsis

by Parhelion



Category: Powers (comic)
Genre: Angst, Other, Very very jossed, Yuletide 2005
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-25
Updated: 2005-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-24 02:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parhelion/pseuds/Parhelion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe Deena Pilgrim isn't the only one having problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catharsis

**Author's Note:**

> Written for KadyMae

Detective Christian Walker knows that he spends too much time watching T.V. while he drinks these days, especially considering that he's a cop. Right now, it's _America's Funniest Powers Videos_ on the screen, still in rotation even though the use of superpowers has been outlawed for months. Why? The part where Sharkskin force-feeds Goldenboy an advertising blimp is funny, but still. Nothing's really happening here but a lot of destruction.

He and his partner, Deena Pilgrim, had recently spent some quality time talking about destruction.

She'd opened with, "You see, there was a reason for Powers staying legal as long as they did."

"Pass me the hot sauce, would you?"

Mouthy as usual, she'd ignored his subtle hint. Probably his hint had been way too subtle, especially given the facts that they ate at _Taqueria Buena_ at least once a week, and he always wanted his cactus burrito a little hotter than it came across the counter.

Pilgrim had handed him the red squeeze bottle and said, "It's the boom-boom-aah factor."

"What?" he'd asked her, even though he knew better. Looking down, Walker had realized that he'd dumped so much sauce into his burrito grande that it was now too spicy even for him.

"Boom. Explosion. The bad guy threw a car at the Power. And your typical Power throws a gasoline truck right back at the bad guy." She'd gestured the toss with a taquito, her eyes narrowed in concentration. "Boom! Result: an even bigger explosion, a ton of destruction, and something within everyone watching outside of the battlezone goes, 'Ahhh.'"

"Yeah, sure, Pilgrim." Maybe he could scrape some of the sauce off, he'd thought.

"Ahhh." This time the sound was low and sensual. She'd grinned, eyes somehow evil beneath the fashionably raggedy-assed blonde hair. "A quick, guilt-free orgasm of destruction, courtesy of your local, neighborhood Power. So then you didn't have to kick that barking dog, or throw a shoe through your television set, or bump off your crazy bo-ss." She coughed. "Sorry, went down the wrong way."

Then she'd taken a big bite out of her beef taquito. Pilgrim had sharp, white teeth. Sharp, cute, white teeth, but noticing the cute never did him any good, so he didn't. "The Powers lived for our sins," she'd said, kind of mushily around her mouthful of meat.

"Jesus, could you at least chew before you talk?" She pissed him off sometimes. Even when she made him want to stretch his lips into a big, goofy, grin, she still pissed him off. Or it might be the feeling behind his urge to grin that annoyed him. Just then, he'd reached for his plastic knife instead of saying anything else.

Even after the scraping operation, his burrito had still been too spicy. He'd burped while filling out evidence reports for the rest of the afternoon.

Maybe Pilgrim had been right. Maybe that was what he was up to this evening, sitting here, and watching television with a lot on his mind: waiting for someone else to make booms for him.

Once upon a time Walker had been a Power himself, and he'd been relieved when he lost his abilities and everything ended. That was what he'd felt back then, relief. He'd been a minor celebrity, and he remembered how wild the life had been, what with the press, and the groupies, and the drinking. Everything had been out of control.

Speaking of drinking, he wasn't getting another beer out of the fridge during the next set of commercials. The fast-food soda would have to do. Cops didn't need extra beers. Too much alcohol was stupid, nothing but a fast way to find trouble when you carried a gun. Besides, he had five case folders piled up and waiting for him back at the division tomorrow. A hangover wouldn't help clear his desk, not that his desk ever was clear.

Powers got hangovers, too. He and Pilgrim have busted enough drunken so-called heroes that Walker had evidence for that. Hell, he'd gotten hangovers himself back when he was a Power although they'd hit him kind of weird.

Walker doesn't remember his childhood. He only has adult memories that fade as they recede into the past. When he'd drunk too much, he'd dreamed of what seemed to be much older memories, ones that made no sense. All that the dreams brought back to him was his doing the same things as a Power over and over, for years and years, always with the same people, never with any new choices. Fighting evil. Battling. Destruction. There'd been tons of destruction, megatons of booms.

After those dreams he'd woken up to his hangovers and found himself in bed, usually not alone, often not remembering what he'd done the night before, sometimes not remembering the faces of the people with whom he'd done it. Losing his powers had ended both the dreams and the drinking. Losing his powers had helped.

At least, losing his powers had helped him until these last few weeks. Now he woke up from the same dream each time. He dreamt of that time when Pilgrim was abducted, and he and the other cops who'd been looking for her had found some college-age kid strung up, hanging naked above an apartment bathtub. The kid had been covered with blood and God knows what else, obviously violated in enough, varied ways to keep the cops all filling out paperwork for a week. For just a moment after they broke down the door and went into that shit-hole, Walker had thought - the kid had been so lanky, pale, and blond - but she'd been elsewhere, locked into a different kind of struggle.

Even though they'd found Pilgrim, even though she'd woken safe in the hospital, he'd still had this nightmare since then. Maybe he shouldn't have admitted to her afterwards that he'd been scared. But maybe he'd been right to tell her that. He was her partner, after all, and her friend. She'd told him that she'd been scared, too. They didn't usually share their secrets. Maybe they should.

Maybe he should tell her about how he could've grabbed those bracelets today, the ones that would've give him Powers back, even though the damn things had disintegrated half a block of suburbia. Now, there was something scary to think about.

Perhaps this kind of fear was the reason for his nightmare. In them, Pilgrim wasn't walking away from the explosion - boom! - in the building by where they found her. No. She was hanging above a bathtub, instead, naked and spattered with--

That poor son of a bitch of a kid might have been the final straw, the burn-out trigger that the uniforms in rough precincts always talked about. Walker had been in such a frantic hurry at the time that he'd barely noticed the details of what had happened to the kid. Perhaps, down deep, he'd seen all the horror that hung in front of his face in that bathroom, the sort of thing that no one should ever be able to ignore for a second.

So maybe when he sees Deena strung up like that in his dreams, all he wants is to save her. Maybe he just wants to be a hero again. Yeah. Save her, break the handcuffs, and fly away with her to a place where nothing will ever go wrong again. Where he won't have the haunting fear of the choices, the lack of choices, the power, and the Powers any more.

He wants to save Deena. Not to...not to fuck her when neither of them has to care about choices and responsibilities. Especially not to fuck her when neither of them has to care because one has all the power and choices, and the other one-- does not.

God, Walker hopes so. He hopes that's true. Or at least he hopes that he won't dream again tonight. He can't take much more of what has always happened to him when he wakes up.

Getting up, he sets his temptations aside, and goes to get another beer. There's still an hour or two before he has to hit the sack, and his fast-food dinner will sop up the alcohol. Besides, _He's my Sidekick_ is on after this commercial break, and he wouldn't want to miss that. Walker really needs someone else's booms tonight.


End file.
